The River: Blinded by the Jungle

If you missed last week’s two hour premier, you have two choices, either read my recap, or watch the gif below for two hours. Either one will suffice.

So it’s Valentine’s Day and nothing says “I love you” like a trip down the Amazon with supernatural entities looking to thwart you at every turn. River Rewind: Let’s go back to July, 2002 for episode#298 (my favorite of the late 200s) of “The Undiscovered Country.” But don’t worry, we’re not going to hang in 2002 for that long. It’s just Clark doing some retro stalking of Mrs. Tess Bauer. Clark noticed a cave in several of Emmet’s videos that looks like this one cave he saw this one time up some hills or something. WE LEAVE AT DAWN.

Hiking in the sun, hiking in the rain, hiking so much in the sun that everyone dries off from the downpour. River Rewind: AJ used to be a miner. Once upon a time, he was trapped underground in an accident that killed almost all of his co-workers. He pledged to never go underground again. He thought being an outdoorsy cameraman would fulfill this dream. He thought WRONG. GET IN THE CAVE, AJ.

River Remark: As anyone who watches The Bachelor knows (not that I do, personally, of course) the one thing you should never do is confirm your greatest fears because at some point, the producers are going to make you face your fear in the most hilariously uncomfortable way possible. You shouldn’t say you’re afraid of caves. You should say you’re afraid of big, juicy steaks and pinot noir.

This is not like Mammoth Cave. For example, there are very few dead bodies laying around in Mammoth Cave per National Park policy. This particular dead body had been disemboweled and his heart was cut out (Valentine’s Day reference!!). Jahel, who, as a reminder, knows everything about everything in the Amazon, says that Los Morcegos did this to him, whoever he is.

AJ sets up a tripod outside the cave and refuses to go inside. You just lost some street cred with me, AJ. Back in the cave where the real action is, the crew hears a banshee like scream. The caves opens up and a bajillion bats fly at them. Well, then. Due to all the bat crap they are now covered in, Lincoln decides to cut his hair. This makes me happy because his hair is definitely in the top three things I hate about him. Hopefully, this will make him 17% less insufferable.

River Fast Forward: As they go to bed shortly after midnight, the clocks skips ahead to 12:51 am as someone/something kreepy krauls around their camp.

Rise and shine, campers! AJ surveys the camp to find some white markings on the ground and bones. Wait, BONES? Seriously? I’m getting out of there when people leave bones on my doorstep. Jahel says Los Morcegos did this because we didn’t hear her the first time. They are watching them right now, judging them from afar. Oh my god. Los Morcegos are the Internet.

River Remark: Why don’t they take sleep shifts?

They hear Emilio shouting nearby and they find him with red, swollen eyes. He says he awoke in the middle of the night and then suddenly felt a burning sensation in his eyes. He can no longer see and Lena will have to describe Lincoln’s new haircut to him in exquisite detail. It’s Day 13 on The River and they decide to head back to the Magus. The whole blindness thing is scaring them off, I guess. One of Los Morcegos grabs one of AJ’s 37 cameras and rocks some self-shot video. Suddenly, Tess feels her eyes burning and she is also struck blind.

They arrive back at the Magus so they can treat the blindness. Jahel calls for help on the radio by using the phrase Whisky Tango Foxtrot. Let me check my urban dictionary here and nope, that’s not going to help you at all. (Google is your friend). The blindness spreads to Clark and the next 30 minutes is everyone just wandering around shouting “Marco Polo” and bumping into the things like this was a Top Chef challenge. Also, Tess and Clark have a thing for each other which, obviously. Tess tells him to erase the camera footage of them having a moment but good luck erasing it from Lincoln’s mind.

The crew has a discussion about what to do and Lena says there is a plant that should neutralize the acid. Clark (blind) heads off to find Kurt (not blind) and hilarity ensues when Kurt stabs the blind guy. Now this is just me, but if I were blind, I wouldn’t try to sneak around all the time. I would play the aforementioned “Marco Polo” game and act like a sonar-using bat. Because a commercial break is fast approaching, one of the Morcegos starts crawling around the Magus and glaring into the cameras.

Clark is having a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day. First, the blindness, and now the knifing. Oof! Jahel continues to stumble around the boat when Los Morcegos attack her. The rest of the crew seals themselves off and hunkers down. Meanwhile, Lena, AJ, and Kurt trek through the jungle and look for the magical flower. Los Morcegos attack them, too, and to make matters worse, leeches. This is starting to look like Fear Factor challenge: Remain quiet while huge leeches crawl all over you and also you are hunted like the Most Dangerous Game that you are. Enjoy!

The happy fun times continue on the Magus as Lincoln needs to close up Clark’s gaping stomach wound. Only problem is, he doesn’t have any sutures. He’s going to have cauterize the wound. But wait, there’s a second problem. He can’t see either. You think that’s bad? There’s a third problem. He’s going to have perform the procedure LEFT-HANDED while eating nachos with his right hand in order to win $25,000 and new jet ski! Lincoln finishes cauterizing the wound which, by all accounts, looks like it really hurt.

AJ decides to take off because Lena and Kurt are both blind and nobody wants to deal with that nonsense. As he tries to WALK OUT THE AMAZON, he see the Sentido tree with the magical flower. The only problem is, AJ, you’re going to have to face your fear and crawl under the tree into a cave to get that flower. Good luck! As he’s digging, the cave starts to collapse around him per the rules mentioned above.

Clark makes an impassioned apology to Los Morcegos for intruding on their land, and being the sentimental blokes that they are, they call off the siege on the Magus and simultaneously pull AJ from the cave of doom and give him the magical flower. Case of the Mysterious Amazon Blindness: SOLVED!

While Lena and Kurt wait on the jungle floor (to die?), Kurt makes a satellite call to some German friends and says that the crew will never find Emmet or the Source and will likely be dead in a few days. Way to think positive, dude!

The episode concludes with people talking about their feelings about this traumatic experience and the love triangle between Emmet, Tess, and Clark. But I mostly tuned this out.

So that was an episode of television! But not what I would call a good episode of television. It was a predictable story about the Natives not taking kindly to strangers wandering around their land. The intended scares were not very scary. The episode just fell flat for me. Kurt made another reference to the Source but that remains as enigmatic as ever at this point. In the land of character development, the writers hashed out the love triangle that no one cares about some more. I’m not even sure Lincoln cares.

Let’s just write off this episode and hope next week comes back with three times the cray cray and at least four monkeys wearings masks.